Gary Larson has been watching the detectives on PBS at Intellectual Conservative:
"Detective" C. Wesley (Wes) Cowan used his brief commentary in a July episode to rip the war. Spewing the usual defeatist jeers ("a mistake," etc.), Cowan delivers lines in the style of CBS-TV's Andy Rooney: Cheap shots, drive-by editorializing, strictly partisan; no mature analysis. Hubris reigns; anyone who disagrees can go jump in the lake.
(Producers call such brief commentaries "interstitials." This was a new term to me. It means "an intervening space between parts.")
At the end of his piece, Wes Cowan (in real life, not a forensic historian, rather a Cincinnati-based "auctioneer and appraiser") launches into his partisan jabs. In spirit he is Bill Moyers all over again, skewing facts to suit a partisan purpose. Can bona fide historians appreciate such tawdry remaking of the past? Reshaping history to fit a bias?
Cowan offers that if only his hero, Sen. John F. Kerry, had won the election, oh, what a wonderful world it would be. Fair enough. Give him that. But what stopped us was his smug, fallacious take-down of the Swift Boat Vets and POWS for Truth--except Cowan did not mention the POWs.
If you did not catch Cowan's sour-faced invective in Episode #503, you never will. His commentary has been snuffed out by his producers, something of a reverse Orwellian memory hole.
No comments:
Post a Comment